LIFE IN ALABAMA IN LATE 1800S/ EARLY 1900S

DAILY LIFE

• Famers worked from sunrise to sunset, milking cows, feeding planting and harvesting the fields. When the farmer completed the farm chores, he still had the everyday chores around the house, such as cutting wood for the fireplace, maintaining fences and hunting to provide food for the family. Even if one did not live on a farm, most people still raised chickens for eggs and cows for milk.

CHORES

• Hauling water, gathering eggs, tending the garden, and filling the wood box if they had one. And some chores like milking cows and feeding livestock had to be done more than once a day. Fieldwork started early, with feeding and harnessing the horses.
• Other chores included cleaning the chicken coop and cleaning the outhouse which was done year 'round.

SCHOOLS

• In the early 1900s children only attended school for a few years, if at all, due to the demands of working in factories, coalmines, and on farms in order to help support their families.
• Parents tended to be satisfied with their children only acquiring the basic educational skills of literacy and numeracy.

FOOD

• Farms generally would have five to ten milking cows, a few sheep, three to seven horses and mules, a large flock of chickens for eggs and meat, and sometimes a few turkeys, ducks, geese or guinea fowl.
• Other things grown on the farm were green beans, cabbage, sweet corn, green peas and tomatoes. Minor crops included other types of beans, squash, pumpkins, watermelons, popcorn, and lettuce of various types.

ENTERTAINMENT

• Board games, cards, dancing to homemade music with family or neighbors, just talking to the neighbors, and going to baseball games if they had the money was the entertainment they had at the time